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[Admin]

Hi Nerys,

There are a couple of options I can think of. Which way you go will depend on your preferred timeframes, budget etc. I recommend you have a read of https://docs.civicrm.org/installation/en/latest/planning/ as it includes some good points to think about when choosing a CRM.

Simple options:
Start with bulk EDM software such as MailChimp / Campaign Monitor / Vison6. They support multiple lists and custom fields, so you can create a list for Alumni and use custom fields to capture additional data. They all support placing forms on another website (usually as embedded iframe or javascript).
They are great if you are looking to build a list and communicate with the audience.
Not good if you’d like to run more complex queries, manage events or process payments etc

Only Vision 6 is hosted in Australia, with the others hosted in the US, which may be an issue with data storage/sovereignty.

OpenSource CRM
CiviCRM is an open-source CRM that manages Contacts, Events, Payments, Memberships, Mailing, SMS. It was created for NFP audiences primarily so has a good feature fit for many Alumni organisations.
Data sovereignty can be managed by hosting the site on an AU/NZ webserver
Does need to be installed with a CMS such as Drupal / WordPress / Backdrop for setting up the basic pages that your audience will interact with.
Can be an issue to run on ‘cheap’ hosting, so you’re best off running a VPS (dedicated server) for better performance which would typically be $2-3000 a year.
However, there is a cost effective hosted solution provided by the core dev team that is well priced at $15 – $50 a month.
CiviCRM is good if you will be using most/all of the core features, especially payments and paid events alongside email marketing. Not many CRM systems support that combination.
Civi has an API that can be used to automate the import/export data. You can also import/export data manually via CSV.

Propriety CRMs
Salesforce, MS Dynamics etc
These are all generally very powerful and configurable but can have reasonably expensive subscriptions and can be complex to setup. They generally don’t support payments, event management or memberships, so that would require third-party integrations of some type.

Hopefully this is some help.

Cheers,
Chris Frost
Firefly Interactive

[Admin]

Hi Nadia,

Sometimes there will be problems if the account you’ve logged in to isn’t an administrator of both the Facebook page and the Instagram account. Also the Instagram account should be a professional account (not personal) if it’s being linked to Meta Business Suite.

Is there a particular error message that’s displayed, or are you not getting an option to link an account? Sometimes it’s tricky to untangle, which isn’t helped that the mobile app and desktop have different ways to do the same thing!

Cheers,
Chris Frost
Firefly
http://www.fi.net.au

[Admin]

Hi Margo,

Is case this is of interest, last year we created a digital version of the Inspired magazine for St Andrew’s Cathedral School (SACS). You can view an issue online here: https://inspired.sacs.nsw.edu.au/

The workflow is simple: create a new magazine issue and add articles. Categories assigned to the articles govern page order and styling. The ‘home’ page is assembled automatically as is an EDM view for sending a summary via Campaign Monitor. There can be multiple editors / authors for creating and editing articles.

The underlying software platform used is our newsletter platform thebuzz.net.au which is very flexible. The pages are all responsive so the publication can be read anywhere on phones / tablets / computers.

Jackie Isenegger is our main contact at SACS, if you’d like more info.

Cheers,

Chris Frost
Managing Director
Firefly

[Admin]

Hi Nicole,

You can use a tool such as Google Trends to compare frequency of search terms https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=AU&q=%2Fm%2F09zzrh

You can enter multiple terms and compare the frequency of results, by time and location.

On page surveys can also be useful, if they are targeted at new website visitors, to find out how and/or why someone has visited your site.

Cheers,

Chris

[Admin]

Hi Di,

Have you looked at Google Data Studio https://datastudio.google.com/

It connects to all sorts of data sources and software (plus you can also upload a CSV, or use Google Sheets). Once you’ve setup a data source you can create multi-page custom reports with graphs, data tables etc that use that data source.

I use it primarily to create custom Google Analytics reports, but it does a lot more than that!

Cheers,

Chris Frost
Managing Director
Firefly
fi.net.au

[Admin]

Hi Leigh,

We’ve helped some of our clients with similar requirements by building them a portal with WordPress. Logins are managed via Single Sign On (SSO) so staff can login easily and be assigned appropriate permissions.

IT can set the staff portal as their browser homepage, so it’s easily accessible. You can also use Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp to automatically send a weekly digest of articles/content that has been published, but might have been missed.

Cheers,

Chris Frost
Managing Director
Firefly
fi.net.au

[Admin]

Hi Ruth,

A ‘soft bounce’ is generally a delay in delivery. They often happen if many emails are sent to Gmail addresses in a short time period, or there were a lot of links in the email message, or your email ‘authentication’ needs to be improved.

Have you setup ‘custom domain verification’ within your Mailchimp account? If you haven’t that will really help as it verifies email sent on your behalf through Mailchimp is legitimate (not spam).

I had a look at your ‘SPF’ record (your IT folks will know what that is) and it doesn’t include some things that MailChimp needs… more info here: Set Up Custom Domain Authentication: DKIM and SPF: https://eepurl.com/dyimHv

We use Campaign Monitor and find it to be reliable for delivery. These days, with most systems, you will need to setup ‘domain verification’ for bulk email to be delivered reliably.

Cheers,

Chris

[Admin]

Hi Julie,

You could look at The Buzz Newsletter. It streamlines your publishing workflow and creates an Email and Print view automatically when an issue is published.

Standard view: https://demo.thebuzz.net.au/demo1/newsletter/issue-26/
Print view: https://demo.thebuzz.net.au/demo1/newsletter/issue-26/print/

More info is available at thebuzz.net.au

[Admin]

Hi Sue,

This could be done fairly easily with an online form that has a payment field attached for buying tickets. That would let you process payments online and capture the contact details you’d need for the draw.

You’d need to be able to export the submissions as a CSV (or similar format) for printing off and doing the draw.

You may also need to be able to limit the number of tickets sold.

There are more sophisticated ways of managing the draw, with it being done electronically, so it depends on what you prefer really.

Cheers,

[Admin]

Hi Julie,

For newsletters Newington College (http://newsletter.newington.nsw.edu.au/blackandwhite/) and Arden Anglican School (http://newsletter.arden.nsw.edu.au/) publish their newsletter in a digital format.

For calendars, if your IT folks can create or generate an ICAL (.ICS) file that can be displayed on a website pretty easily these days. The good thing about an ICAL file is that once created it will update automatically as new events are added.

Google Calendar is quite a popular method to create events which can be used to make an ICAL file if you don’t have one readily available.

[Author]

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